If, as a consequence of Morning’s find, gold should not be demonetized, if it should be permitted to remain as a measurer of all values, and the extent of the deposit should be made known to the world, the inevitable result would be to quadruple the prices of land, labor, and goods, and to reduce to one-fourth of their present proportions the value to the creditor of all existing indebtedness. The farmer whose land was worth $10,000 would find it worth $40,000, and the man who had loaned $5,000 upon it would find his loan worth but $1,250 practically, because the purchasing power of his $5,000 would be reduced to one-fourth of its present capacity. All government bonds of the nations, all county, city, and railroad bonds, and all the mortgages and promissory notes and book accounts in the world, would, if all of Morning’s gold should be poured at once into circulation, without preparation or warning, be reduced at one blow to one-fourth of their present value, and all the owners of land, and implements, and horses, and cattle, and merchandise would find their value at once increased fourfold. The laborer who had only his hands or his brains would remain unaffected. His wages would be quadrupled, and so would the cost of his living. Knowledge of the extent of the Morning mine would immediately enrich the debtors and ruin the creditors of the world, unless the governments of earth should demonetize gold, deny it access to the mints, refuse to coin it, and so degrade it to a commodity. An illustration in a small way of the operations of this immutable law of finance may be found in the history of San Francisco. The foundations of some of the great fortunes of that city may be traced to the days of the Civil War, when San Francisco wholesale merchants paid their Eastern creditors in legal tender currency, the while they diligently fostered a public sentiment which made it discreditable to the honesty and ruinous to the credit of any California retailer who should attempt to pay his debt to them in the despised greenbacks. The interior storekeeper glowed with pride when Ephraim Smooth & Company gathered in his golden twenties, and commended his honesty for “paying his debts like a man, in gold, and not availing himself of the dishonest legal tender law.” But Smooth & Company paid their New York creditors in greenbacks, and pocketed the difference.